Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday June 07, 2007 @10:08AM
from the crushing-tokyo-big-or-just-andre-the-giant-big dept.

palewook writes "Combine the best elements of an iPod with a BlackBerry's addictive usefulness, and you may just get Apple's Next Big Thing. Around 2009, when the lower cost version of iPhone appears, Business Week believes the yearly market for iPhones could be over 10 billion dollars a year. Its an interesting prediction; if those numbers come to pass, iPhone could become a bigger source of revenue than the traditional iPod. 'The answer may not come until 2009. By then, Apple should have begun creating lower-cost iPhone variants to reach consumers scared off by the introductory $499 price. It also will probably have moved into overseas markets and cut deals with more carriers to utilize higher-speed wireless networks. So while most analysts look for Apple to sell around 3 million units this year and 10 to 12 million in 2008, many figure that 20 million will move in 2009.'"

the key to the success of the iphone will be initial public perception once it's in the wild.

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magnitude - for a long time abroad (Europe, for example) and a bit more recently in the US. quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad. i don't have to wait for visual confirmation of a keystroke to continue texting.

the sidekick was popular with teens a couple of years ago for this very reason. It was one of the first phones to relatively inexpensively offer qwerty and seamless communications packages for texting, email, and IM. it didn't matter that the form factor was less than aesthetically pleasing, it mattered that the phone allowed you to communicate quickly and simply, and it also matter that providers soon offered a prepaid service that allowed teens to get the phone and buy minutes/data.

if this screen is somehow at least as tactile and responsive as keys are on a phone pad - then the iphone will dominate communications because apple understands how to woo consumers. this is clearly not a business device, so they need to dominate the consumer market. teens drive a lot of the consumer market and teens text more than they speak (let me expound: by teens i more aptly mean 13-24 market). at an unsubsidized $500, this might be a little high for this market, so apple might have to come downmarket fast. what's interesting here is that the fashion industry does this with runway lines - so called couture. those items are unrealistic for street wear and ridiculously priced - but that drives interest for the "ready to wear" stuff that shows up at your local department store.

the other issue that is interesting to me is that the phone can be used as a vanity phone. if usability is an issue - then people will want to have one, but have a more functional phone on hand for day to day and keep the iphone around when trolling for the ladies. so even if usability suffers you might see significant sales because it will be the it phone to have, even if for show. working in media, there are plenty of film execs who have blackberries but are totally unable to use them, but have them because this is the accessory a film producer is expected to have. so they carry it around and have an assistant check emails, etc.

-third part software is not an issue to the average user.-battery life might be an issue to the average user, but it will not prevent him/her from buying the product.-3g vs 2.5g, etc. this is also not an issue to the average user. they do not care about this. as long as it works - users are familiar with and expect slower bandwidth time on a handheld.

the average user is concerned with the following more than likely:

-does it look hot? will this make me look cooler? (CHECK)-does it work? (?????) this is where the texting comes in. Your average user might say: "It's cool but texting on it makes me frustrated because i have to get used to doing it a new way" (this is important because at $500 you don't get downmarket uptake by the people most likely not to bristle at the new interface - kids/tweens/teens) - or - "It's too slow to text on this thing."

the ipod function will not get used because it will kill battery life. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway. the audience is simply not that interested in that kind of convergence. it increases complexity and the market doesn't want that.

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons.

This article nicely describes a mechanism for tricking the brain with smart vibrations of the cell phone, providing a sense of tactile response on touch screens which might solve the issue with lack of tactile response for many touch screen use cases:
How it works: Touch Screen Cell [time4.com]

I could see this being very effective. I have noticed that the tactile feedback given by the vibration feature in the Nintendo Wii's controller is fantastic. It doens't have to be overwhelming to let you know that something is going on.

I'm not sure how well this will work with the iPhone but I could see it solving the tactile keyboard feedback problem. This is the first I had heard about this feature.

It's definitely not just about aesthetics of the device. The primary driver behind the iPhone form factor is efficient use of device front real-estate. Buttons have been proliferating like mad on "smart phones for years, and it's not helping them sell to the broader market. Why? Well, the devices intimidate some users. Other users find them to be cumbersome. 40% of the surface is keypad, leaving only a tiny screen you can't really use for much besides text messages. They buttons can't be changed after they are stamped out. You may want QUERTY, somebody else might want right-hand-Dvorak. Somebody else wants a two-thumb layout. You may want a numeric keypad layout when you're dialing, but no other time.

Yes, the touch screen could be seen as a design risk, and it's possible that it will be rejected by the market. There are undoubtedly other people like you who are adicted to buttons, and dialing in the dark. I suspect that even most of those people will find that they can adapt to the iPhone easily enough, particularly if it provides haptic feedback as a user preference. (Some people might want that turned off -- something you can't do with a button.)

quick and effective texting on my motorola Q now means i can text without looking at the keys - as tactile response allows me to fly over the keypad.

Ugh. I can't imagine using a Q for texting. Nokia makes a variety of keyboard phones with much better interfaces. I don't know what else you're using your Q for, but you might want to look into a few of the Nokia units next time you upgrade.

the iphone has one potential dealbreaker for me and that is the lack of buttons. texting outstrips voice by orders of magn

I'm curious, how is leaving a meeting easier than texting during the meeting?

Because a) your attention is divided and b) it's NEVER polite no matter what you think. There are times that it's a necessary evil, but that's not the same thing as "polite".

If people just wanted to make calls then they would buy phones that make a whole lot more sense for that.

What makes you think that people don't? The hottest phone on the market right now is the Motorola Razr. A phone that's valued more for its small size than its cunning text messaging features.

The general trend lately with phones is that they are getting bigger, not smaller, which is precisely to accomodate texting.

See paragraph above. If your statement was true, then the Razr wouldn't be so popular. You can't extrapolate your own specific wants/needs in high-end phones to the entire market if the data doesn't support it. Specifically, this engadget story [engadget.com] lists the best selling phone as the Nokia 1100. A low-end candybar phone with a Black and White screen. The Razr trails behind with 50 million of its own sales. (According to the article.) "Big" phones like the Treo and Q don't even show up as a blip on the radar.

. i don't think the average user wants all/a portion of his music collection on his phone anyway

This is something I've never understood. Hasn't history taught us anything? There is always a vocal minority screaming that they don't want an "all-in-one" device. They first spoke up when the Smartphones were first coming out, the original Treos and Blackberry's. Most arguments were along the lines of, "the UI is too confusing", "the battery life sucks", "I can carry a cellphone and a pager and a PDA, my pockets are ENORMOUS", etc.

However, what they really mean is that they don't want a "poorly designed all-in-one device". That's a non-argument though, because it's true of ANY product. Of course we want it to be designed well.

Back to music though, of course people want their phones to have all their music. How great would that be? One less thing to carry. The trick is doing it without making the phone bigger/shorter battery/grossly more expensive. Do that, and it'll sell like hotcakes. Well, as long as its branded and marketed with an "i" in the beginning of its name.

1) No synching with Outlook. 2) No synching with enterprise email services.

isn't IMAP enough for this? I've never used an outlook mail server so I don't know what other stuff it does... If you're talking about calendaring stuff I think that is in the works with leopard's iCal in terms of syncing with meeting maker at least.

Do all of the 'bad for business' arguments really boil down to issues with MS proprietary stuff?

Well, simply? Yes. It isn't just MS stuff though, if a business already has PDA phones in use they also are likely to have Blackberry services as well. From what I can find the iPhone doesn't support that either.

Let me preface this with "I'm not a hardcore business user." I don't sit at home answering work emails. I sync my phone with Outlook primarily to get my calendar items and contacts. If I couldn't do that, there would be zero business use for my phone. Having my meetings on my phone has saved my

At our enterprise, we have several thousand people using lotus notes.We are locked into Blackberry big time.Our experimental imap server went away 2 years ago.Noone is interested in maintaining another device / email systemfor an enterprise with enough complications. Already there is oneguy who does almost nothing but blackberry stuff full time.They got to the enterprise first, and we are stuck with them.

It's not about ssh, X Windows, or iWork. The current "smart phone" industry is providing people with a big heavy feature they don't presently want -- MS Office on their phone. Yeah, it makes for dramatic commercials where spreadsheets are edited at the last second before a big meeting and a billion dollar merger is saved. In practice, people running billion dollar mergers don't really care what's in the spreadsheet. They don't read them, they have people who have people who read them for them. This feature was added to smart phones by Microsoft because Excel is what they had lying about to sell, and because it makes for dramatic advertisements.

The iPhone is about a balance of features that people really want. Business people would love an iPod in their phone, because they spend a fair bit of time on airplanes, in hotels, in airports, in taxi cabs. They also would love an easy to use map system that could help them find a decent restaurant nearby. The Apple iPhone commercials [apple.com] don't look like they target business users, but they nail squarely what a business user wants from a phone. They want to carry less shit with them. They want to be able to quickly look up something on the internet, or bookmark something they heard about for reference later. They're going to buy an iPhone and their older iPod and Palm Pilot will be in a drawer.

The biggest thing, however, will be ease of use. If the Address book doesn't have some asinine limit of 500 contact numbers (it wont') and if it syncs easily and reliably (it will) and if the web browser really works and if Google Maps are easy to use on the iPhone, these things are going to be the hottest new business gadget since the original Palm Pilot.

It's about efficiency. Carry one or two fewer devices everywhere I go. Carry one device that's easy to learn and easy to use, rather than so hard to learn that many users don't even know about the advanced features and so hard to use that the advanced features they know about rarely get touched. Sending text messages, checking email, and placing and receiving calls need to work well.

A few business people I know are going to get an iPhone for one feature: visual voicemail (random access to voicemail queue). They calculate that the time and annoyance they will save with that single feature more than justifies the cost of the device.

Last I checked the thing had no mechanism for ActiveSync, so no real-time synchronization with email, calendars, contacts. In my phone I don't have Outlook contacts and regular contacts.

you've been able to check one?:) iSync already synchronizes my contacts on my Razr, I see no reason why it wouldn't work with an iPhone, IMAP will take care of email sync. Calendaring is the only thing left... but with the iCal icon in all of the iphone pictures, I gotta think they have something for that too.

I have one place, if I add it to my contacts in Outlook it will appear on my phone almost instantly depending on the time of the day. Alternatively if I add a contact while I'm out in the field it will automatically be in Outlook where it is safely backed up.

iSync does this if you just bring your phone into bluetooth range.

Storage on the smart-phones is simple as well, a simple SD card and you can have a good chunk of music, or lots of reference material, or in my case, a password database.

SD cards are nice... but Apple could have a different solution for this with wifi.

Emailing while out in the field has become a big app too, from what I'm seeing the iPhone won't hold up real well to texting. Besides the fact that the screen would get dirty I don't know how it would stand up to regular cell phone abuse. How many times have I dropped my Treo? Many, and it's still fine, the phone isn't as pretty as it once was but it's still fully functional.

this should be an issue for consumers more than business... most business people aren't out in the field, just in meeting all day. The iphone interface should work fine in a meeting... and be less conspicuous than a laptop.

Lastly, and the biggest reason why the iPhone is not for business. As systems administrator I can't remotely manage and secure the phones for my organization. If a Treo is lost and there are important sensitive documents on the phone I can simply erase everything on it so that any person they may find it on a park bench somewhere will not see that sensitive information. I can do this all wireless and in real-time.

There's no way to know about this until after the iphone is out... and with running OS X, Apple could concievably allow you to ssh into an iPhone or maybe even run remote desktop.... though I doubt they've had time to get such features ready for launch. But I see no reason why they couldn't in a year or so. I also bet the iphone can lock its data from the casual snoop like an ipod can already.

Considering OS X for the desktop still lacks these advanced management, monitoring, and security tools I don't think the phone is going to get it anytime soon. I will admit, the day that Apple does close this whole I imagine their market share will rise much faster. Combine that with binary compatibility with Windows and Apple would have all it needs to become dominant. I don't see it happening though, Apple has always seemed content to be a smaller player in the field of business.

Did you write the above just to troll? OS X Server has had this sort of stuff for years... plus you can easily get ports of most of the Linux utilities as well. I thought this sort of stuff would be common knowledge by now. OS X is a Unix... the shared libraries are weird, but you can still port all of the wonderful FOSS stuff over.

And "Apple" and Windows are not binary compatible, you can just dual boot Windows and OS X on a mac now.

p.s. I'm not a fanboi, just trying to understand the "iPhone bad for business" meme, 'cuz everyone I work with wants to get one for business... but we're kinda unique in not using MS Office much and using mostly Linux stuff instead.

With many of the recent comments on the iPhone suggesting the real acceptance test will be whether your Mum can use it, when I saw the article's title I thought - ah! now they're going to produce a 'large button' version for older users.

While the big button idea is funny I don't think that the real acceptance test will be peoples Mothers or Grandmothers.I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK. I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them. The only thing I can figure out is that Apple made a deal about using AT&Ts pipes if net neutrality goes south.I am going ready for a new phone in November and the IPhone is tempting if I can do development on it. It could be a great market to get into.

Maybe, but the big breakout happens if that's NOT true. Remember, there were lots of MP3 players out there when Apple stomped them. They did so by making a techno-geek device into something everyone _trusted_ they could actually use. And that's what "Apple" means now. That's important, if it is the case that people are not buying smartphones because they are too geeky (or people believe they are), then this could really smoke.

Once enough flash executives get their hands on it, AT&T and Apple will need to make good on making the iPhone a real business device. There's little that's currently attractive about the AT&T/Cingular network so many people are holding out until Verizon can get access to the iPhone. However, Verizon competes with everything about the iPhone so I don't know how portable business specific advances will be for the iPhone on Verizon. The only way this will work is if AT&T gets their act together an

I hate Verizon for the same reason - locking out phone features which only benefit Verizon. I just got a RAZR V3M and Verizon deliberately disabled the OBEX function (Object Exchange) which was enabled on the V3C. OBEX lets you browse the phone's file system, recover pictures, plant MP3 files as ringtones... But NOOOO!! Verizon turned all that off so they can sell your pictures back to you, sell ringtones etc. Everything the phone can do has been disabled and turned into a paid service. I'm done with any company that starts abusing customers.

I just got a RAZR V3M and Verizon deliberately disabled the OBEX function (Object Exchange) which was probably enabled by accidenton the V3C, since it's been diabled on most of the other Verizon phones since it was invented.

I see the target for the IPhone to be the Treo and Blackberry crowd. I really want to see one and the SDK.

I see it more aimed at the Sidekick crowd [slashdot.org]. Right now, it's unlikely Apple is going to offer more than "widget style" programming for the device, and it doesn't really connect to corporate mail systems. The type of people who want a Treo or Blackberry for that Organizer/business connectivity type environment are going to be put off by a device primarily aimed at multimedia and web browsing.

I think you have the target market entirely wrong. The iPhone is not going to compete with a Blackberry wielded by a businessman. The Blackberry market is a fairly small market that really focuses on young professionals. Your average teenager or college student doesn't have a Blackberry. The iPhone is targeted solidly at the same market as the iPod, which is to say the holy grail of throwing money into the wind to score trendiness, 12-24. Obviously there is going to be plenty of spill over to other mar

1. Retail channel
There were many big problems to solve simultaneously, perhaps including one that couldn't be solved any other way, than partnering with at least one carrier: consumers today buy cell phones from wireless providers. That meant that Apple had to get the iPhone into wireless stores to really break into the market with anything other than a hobbyist handset maker niche. AT&T has over 2000 stores in the U.S., apparently. Other large wireless providers are similar in scale of retail presence. Wireless providers have stores in airports, big malls, little malls, downtown areas, inside of other stores like Radio Shack, Costco, etc. Apple couldn't build that kind of retail network in time to sell the iPhone, it needed to get the device into places where people were already looking for phones.

2. Give and Take of Negotiations & Shaking the Industry
I suspect that Apple would have preferred to be able to secure deals with multiple vendors in the U.S. However, the cell phone industry is seriously distorted, globally, not merely in the U.S. The handset makers think that the wireless carrier is the customer, which is the ultimate cause of cell phone suckage. Cell phones are camels designed by committes of people who have never even imagined a desert oasis, let alone been to one. Apple probably had to grant a period of exclusivity to Cingular / AT&T in order to get the rest of the things Apple needed for the iPhone to be an industry shaker -- which it already has been, despite the fact that it won't even be in consumer hands for a few more weeks. And Apple got a whole lot of stuff, some of it unprecedented including changes to the provider's network to support "visual voicemail". Companies like Verizon, even though they may provide good service to their customers, also are wed to the distorted market. They perceive bluetooth as a competitive threat, and cripple it in their phones to lock their customers into their ringtone sales engine and into paying extra to transfer photos from the phone to their computer. Apple's insistance that the iPhone not be hobbled by the carrier led Verizon to say "Thanks, we'll try it our way." But the Djinni is out of the bottle, on June 29. As consumers learn what these devices can really do, they'll be demanding blue tooth sync, 802.11 connection to their PCs, and other iPhone features from Verizon. Verizon will see its subscriber base shrink if they don't provide similar, un-hobbled capability to their customers.

3. HSPDA vs. EVDO
There's another interesting tidbit regarding the 3G network market in the U.S. that might be a factor. AT&T/T-Mobile/MISC GSM Vendors appear to be seriously lagging behind Verizon/Sprint/Alltell, which blanketed the U.S. Market with 2.4 Mbit EVDO [wikipedia.org] data service many months ago. In fact this seems to be "common wisdom" amongst Slashdot / Gizmodo / Engadget geeks.
As everyone knows, AT&T and the many other network providers around the globe are betting on the other major 3G network technology, HSPDA [wikipedia.org]. What seems to have been overlooked, in the frustration with the slow pace of 3G rollout from the GSM vendors, is that HSPDA seems on the brink of crushing EVDO in terms of bandwidth. According to that wikipedia page "Current HSDPA deployments now support 1.8 Mbit/s, 3.6 Mbit/s, 7.2 Mbit/s and 14.4 Mbit/s in downlink." One of my gadget geek friends was able to confirm that HSPDA service is available in his

As an aside, if you want a "Big Button Phone" for Mom/Grandma, look into the jitterbug [jitterbug.com].

Their bullet points are:

Live, 24-hour operators provide personal service

Dialing is easy with large, backlit buttons

A soft ear cushion lets you hear every word

Affordable rate plans from just $10 a month

Managing the phone number list is via the operator by talking to them or sending them an email or fax (or manage it yourself online soon).They even have a "simple" phone where you just have the list of numbers, no dial buttons.

Its only available in the U.S. right now, but its a great idea for a service, and I believe Samsung makes the phones.

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

That's a good point. I really like Apple and have never been let down by their hardware but it's way too early to be making crazy predictions about the Iphone saving the world. Competitors are genuinely scared though, Microsoft had that FUD piece a while back about the Iphone being useless for business. I found that funny given the fact that the ipod is useless for business as well yet was still a success.

Overall I have no doubt the Iphone will do well but it's too early to make predictions 2 years down the road.

If the iPhone plans on taking on the Crackberry, then it's GOT to be useful for business. The thing that makes the Crackberry sell like crazy is that it sync's seamlessly with most business email systems.

If the iPhone can't do that, ultimately it will be relegated to a vanity toy.

Think about it - I know a bunch of people who are totally addicted their crackberries, will they really switch to the iPhone? Does the iPhone provide enough value to convince them to ditch their crackberry given that they'll lose 24x7 access to their email?

If the iPhone can't sync with corporate email systems seamlessly, then it's going to become a vanity toy and not the powerhouse that Apple (and the Apple fanboys) want it to be.

I doubt that iPhones are going to sync with Corp. email so easily. The reason Blackberry has such a great sync with corporate email is because businesses have their own blackberry management servers (I don't know if the servers live at RIM or at the the local company's site, though) that tie into the corporate email servers. iPhone is not being launched as a business product, or as with a business 'edition'.

iPhone will probably have POP3 access to mailboxes like most current smartphones do.

I think small business/independent businessmen could use iPhone no problem; but they have to manage their own contacts and keep their own address book. Corporate Joe working at a firm with more than 100 users will probably just continue to use the solution handed down to him via his company; and the only decent enterprise system right now is RIMs.

it's a local server. Our Blackberry Enterprise Server logs into our Exchange servers and basically checks whether any of the users have mail. If they do, it forwards it out over the RIM network to the individual devices. It's exactly the same system that Good Inc uses for the GoodLink software you can run on Handspring Treos.A Motorola Q with a data connection can get your e-mail over wireless broadband directly from the Exchange server, and I imagine that any other PDA phone with data capability can too

The iPhone won't redefine the industry, but if it really can bring together what has become a fragmented set of mobile features (phone + web browsing / maps / PDA features), coupled with video/iPod functionality, into an easy-to-use interface, it will give Apple a good foothold in the market.

I'll hold out for an iPhone nano which does all of the above minus the video (who really needs it at this screen size?) in a truly pocketable package.

How about we wait until they've sold *one* until we predict that they'll sell 20 million 2 years from now.

I predict that nobody will do this.

In fact, I predict that by June 26--three days before the phone launches--iPhone-related predictions will be a $30 million dollar business, capturing a 5% market share in the fast-growing and lucrative Pulling Predictions Out Of Your Ass Industry. By June 27, market penetration will grow to 38.6%, and by 11:59PM on June 28, it will be at 110%: not only will every man, woman, and child on the planet will have a prediction about initial iPhone salesfigures. but so will most dogs and many goldfish.

More reliably, I predict that if anybody is right in their predictions, they will crow about it every time they make a future prediction. If they are wrong, they will gloss over the fact and go back to pulling more predictions out of their ass.

-price range: current smarphones are around $200. the Q, the blackjack, etc. even with added memory you come in way under the iphone price tag and still get the keypad which imo is a bonus, not a detriment.

Personally, I can't see why people would want to spend $500 on a cell phone/music player. All the cell phones i've had, especially the flashy expensive ones have died in 2 years. Also, they are usually tied to the phone company. I'd rather spend $300 on a music player that isn't tied to some phone company and get the free phone when I sign up for the service. I know, I only get a free phone if I sign a contract, but I don't plan on switching phone companies every 3 months, and it's not like they give you

I agree. The same form factor without the phone inside (but still Wi-Fi enabled) would be cheaper, not require a service contract and would sell by the boat load as a fancy iPod/Video player. Most people have a phone already. However, when your phone wears out in two years, what are you going to look at first if you already know and love the fancy iPod? By then, other providers are scheduled to have access to it. Apple themselves would have to totally screw up somehow to keep 2009 from being a huge year for

"while driving and in numerous situations where I don't want to LOOK at the phone"Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.

Heck if the IPhone stops people from using their cell while driving it may save thousands of lives!

Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.

Doesn't really make a difference. The source of danger from using a phone while driving is far more from tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation than anything else; while it is rather dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, its not substantially more dangerous to do so without a hands-free phone. Though, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal.

Hmmm I can touch type at about 90 words/min but it isn't the keyboard buttons that let me do that... it's the spatial memory in my hands or whatever part of my brain that holds spatial memory for my hands. I suspect that is true of a phone as well, ie: I've had the same phone for several years now, great buttons... but i can't touch dial it very well because I rarely use it for any length of time or at all really (I don't call people much, prefer email or just waiting til I see them) but I'm certain that a

Yeah. The 1-9 is a 3x3 matrix of buttons with the middle button 'funny' (mine has a little nub on it). With your thumb on the middle key (5) it is pretty trivial to shift up and around (1-3) left (4) right (5) or down and around (5-9).

I tend to think that additional features follow the law of diminishing returns: after a while extra crap becomes a burden rathern than a selling point. It's my opinion that people feel confused and overwhelmed by one device that "does it all." The beauty of the iPod was that it did what it was intended to do exceedingly well. It didn't have poorly conceived features tagged on to simply add more bullet points to the packaging. I really hope that the iPhone can walk the line between all-in-one usefullness

5 hours of talk/video time? (16 hours if you only play audio) I doubt that it is going to make that much of an impact with that kind of battery life. I know thats longer than the video play time of a video iPod, but if your iPod runs out of power, chances are you are going to be annoyed, but thats about it. If your phone dies, you could miss an important email/call/whatever. Then you will probably be much more pissed.

Just my 2 cents, I think its a great device otherwise, but great devices with no power are pretty much expensive bricks.

This would only be a problem if you were going to use it for watching video on a long trip (perhaps a very long plane trip?) and were going to drain the battery completely. Still, I don't think it has enough storage to store enough video for a >5 hour trip. I guess maybe you could be on a flight to Hawaii and completely drain the battery playing Tetris while listening to music and then you'd have to b

The iPhone doesn't exist in a vacuum. Apple have (arguably) raised the bar on screen quality, usability, features and memory size, and the people who currently have 100% of the mobile phone market won't be ignoring that. The question is how quickly their corporate cultures can switch round to building phones that are not just designed to tick boxes on a features checklist but are actually good at the things they can currently just about do.

While my personal opinion is a negative one, I can see why people are excited about the iPhone. I must say, however, Apple's biggest mistake is choosing the Cingular/AT&T network. Restricting the phone to just that network is hardly a smart move...I mean, if they are gonna restrict it to one network, why restrict it to the network that has some of the most issues?

Restricting it to Cingular/AT&T makes SOME sense.Apple probably wants to market the phone Globally, so it makes sense to stick with GSM carriers (at least at first). They also need a certain amount of cooperation with the cell phone company to handle their take on Voice Mail and other things.

The only other GSM carrier in the U.S. is T-Mobile, and, since they are a more global company, they probably either wanted more money, and/or would relinquish less control to Apple, so AT&T it is.

Yeah, but one of the draws of the iPhone (as with any smart phone) is it's internet-browsing abilities...what's the point of browsing the net on a network that is marginally quicker than dial-up? Especially on your shiny brand new $500+ phone.

...once the price comes down. Also, I think that more carriers will need to offer the iPhone. Just Cingular isn't enough.

I could see buying one if they were in the $300 range and I could pick which wireless company I want to use. Just look at the RAZR. Weren't those originally offered by just one carrier (in the States) and pretty pricey to boot? Now every wireless company offers them and nearly everyone I know has one (except me, I like candy-bar style phones).

* I can install whatever software I want on it (wow, just like a Microsoft smartphone or a PDA)* I can play ogg-vorbis, mp3, avi, and other media formats on it* It comes with a standard stereo headphone jack in addition to a headset one* It comes with 3G and bluetooth is not locked down at ALLIf I buy something with all the capabilities of a PDA, I'd want it to replace my PDA, not be locked down. I've avoided smartphones and stuck with a separate PDA due to the limited nature of PDA+phone models so far.

Whilst people will buy it as a fashion statement, it's going to struggle as it's previous generation in some ways. It's biggest problem is it doesn't support 3G which for many people is a must have feature.

It will be reliability. This isn't an iPod; you're iPod breaks and so you can't listen to music or watch videos, that's a shame. But people are wedded to their mobile phones -- if these things can't stand up to the pounding that a normal mobile phone takes in the course of a day, you're going to see sales tail off pretty damned fast.

I now have a Nokia 5nnn thingy with the bouncy rubber case which comes with a camera Ihave never used, an FM radio I have never used, a compass! which I have used and some otherbells and whistles but it works very well as a phone.

I will spend even less money the next time I buy one and get more of what I reallywant from the thing -- simple user interface and long battery life.

I personally can see why. I want a phone to be a phone nothing more nothing less. I've has a treo [great palm pilot - lousy phone) and was bought a p800 (lousy PDA, lousy phone).

You have bought devices that had functionality you did not use. I suspect a lot of us have. I have a very basic phone right now and it still does not do a very good job as a phone. The iPhone will succeed if it works really well as a phone and is easier to use than other phones. The iPhone will crush the competition and be an enormous success if works really well as a phone and for 5-10 other common tasks that currently suck balls to do on other phones. I know a dozen people right off the top of my head w

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase. There are huge, competent companies churning out amazingly sophisticated models of all types (just this quarter, the SonyEricsson W880 and the Nokia N95 are great examples), and they are refreshing those models at a furious pace.

The mobile markets differ around the world, but the Western European model essentially removes the purchase price from the end-user. I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.

Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world. Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well. My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on. It's very hard to get right the phone bit, and nothign of what I've read about the iPhone tells me it'll be any good at that. It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.

Apple might talk about a low-cost verion in 2009, but the others will have cheaper phones that do far more in 2007, let alone 2008 or 2009.

They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere. I might be wrong - it might have a neat feature that'll make it a must-have - but I'll be very surprised if they do - and the second it's out, the competitors will be throwing together better competing phones.

The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

Amazing how Apple just happened to jump into a market, just as it started to boom! Never mind that 80% of the boom was from devices Apple sold. It's not like Apple took a market that was growing at a snails pace and infused a breath of fresh air into it. No way can Apple be responsible for growth.

The mobile phone market is completely different to this. Completely. There is an enormous existing market which has already been through most of its rapid-growth phase.

How much of a percentage are smartphones to the general phone population today? Huh.

Apple have no experience at making phones. They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.

Why? Why is it that much harder in the phone world? The iPod today already can browse lists of things well. It can even review contacts. Why is it so much different to have an iPod you can hold to your head? Apple knows interface design very well, and knowing how to help people with complex tasks on small devices is really not that much of a different task from a music player to a phone.

Is Apple not familiar with radio equipment? Never mind every computer comes with Bluetooth and WiFi. Are they not good with power management? Never mind that iPods get pretty good battery life. I'm just not seeing what about phones is so much harder that APple cannot use the experience they have to do a very good job right out of the gate.

It's not 3G which rules it out for many technophiles including myself, too.

That might matter to me a little more if my very large metra area (Denver) even had 3G or was scheduled to have it anytime soon. But it doesn't matter, because I have used EDGE and it's OK. Mainly for any extended browsing I would be using the WiFi that is pretty much ubiquitous in my day to day life, far faster than 3G and with better battery usage. SO I hardly think this rules out technical users at all (and we already know Apple will use 3G in places it makes sense, like Europe later on).

They might be moderately successful in a niche in the USA, (and in the mobile pheon world, the US is a niche), but I cannot see it becoming widely successful elsewhere.

That's because you can't see a slight redesign for other markets coming. You can't even see the growth of the iPod for what it was, I guess it's little surprise you can't see the potential of the iPhone given what exists today.

...I don't think the iPhone is going to be big at all. The ipod was/is huge becuase it was a relatively early entrant in a market that was just on the verge of exploding in size, and it was hugely advertised and hyped, and there wasn't any real competition for at least a couple of years. The tie-in with iTunes helped too.

You have to think about markets in terms of consumers and uses. When the iPod came out there were already a lot of people trying to sell digital players, but none of them were very well designed, none of them did a good job of accommodating the entire workflow, none of them were really easy to learn and use. There were players with better stats and more features, but the adoption was very limited. Most people were sticking with portable CD players as a result. The iPod changed that both by providing the right package and through good marketing.

Now take a look at the market the iPod is targeting. It is aimed at the smartphone market, which has a lot of existing products, but fairly small adoption of those products. Most people are sticking with cheap, low end cell phones and a lot of people are not happy with those either. For the iPhone to be huge they need to repeat what they did with the iPod. Apple needs to provide the entire workflow and they need to do it so it is learnable and easy and they need to market it right. I think the marketing is working so far. The question is, can Apple provide a good user experience and will AT&T hold up their end of that experience?

The mobile phone market is completely different to this.

Apple is aiming at the smartphone market, not just the phone market. As with the iPod they hope to take a significant chunk of that market and they hope to pull people in from the lower end phone market, much as the iPod pulled in people from the Discman market.

I haven't paid more than $100 US for a new phone in eight years, and I'm a technophile who upgrades every year, ususally to a high-end just-released model.

In 2001, how many people had paid more than $100 for their portable music player (usually a CD player)? I'm guessing less than 1% of the market.

Apple have no experience at making phones.

They had no experience at making portable music players.

They make stuff which can be good to use, but that's hard in the phone world.

It is hard in the music player market too, which is why it is still really hard to find an iPod competitor that is as easy or nice to use. I don't even own an iPod, but I've used them without a problem. Apple is good at UIs and usability testing to create a polished user experience.

Above all, phones have to be good phones first, then be good ipods, then have other stuff they do well.

To not be a flop, they need to be a better phone. That shouldn't be hard. It takes a minimum of 5 key presses to call a number in my phonebook using my very "simple, just a phone" cell phone. To do well they need to be as good an iPod as the iPod with a permissible slightly larger learning curve. To revolutionize the market, they need to perform a few other functions just as well and just as easily and they need to keep the user experience clean and easy (AT&T may be a problem here).

My SonyEricsson W850 is a very good phone, a great walkman, and also lets me browse the Internet at broadband speeds in a decent way, has good Java games available, a decent-enough camera, a torch, alarm clock and so on.

The W850 is maybe a bit better than par for the course, which is to say 99% of all people do not want to spend the time messing around with it even enough to learn to use the browser, e-mail, or alarm clock. 50% of people probably do not even want to take the time to learn to use SMS or the camera on it and most people just buy a cheaper phone or ignore all those features you talk about. This is

For me, whether or not to get an iPhone all hinges on how much the data plan is going to cost. I'd gladly pay $1000 or more for a single device that could be a usable network terminal, music player, gps, and phone, but I'm not going to pay 30-70 dollars every month for the life of the device to use it.Considering that decent home broadband is now 25-60 dollars most places here, I really can't see paying more than 5-10 dollars for the bandwidth, and maybe another $5-10 for the portable aspect. But then isn't

Using an iPhone may indeed let me leave the MBPro in the office much of the time.
For these types of users, iPhone makes a BIG difference with the iphone in a pocket rather than a ten pound bag with charger and extension cord.
People hereabouts have complained about only 1 cell provider, no 3G, no 20 gig memory, no EU sales, but to fully debug everything before going global, Apple has picked it right to limit it to N. America. Obviously the rest of the options will come, as the 3rd party applications will.
Hey, the phone is not even out, and everyone has statements about various forms of failure. If you want to see failures, take a look at all the losing products from MS over the last 10 years. MS has existed profitably because of two long standing products, and those financed the losses on all the "new" products.

The ipod was a huge success because it was introduced before a lot of people owned portable mp3 players, it looked better than the competitors and (most importantly) most of the alternatives had rubbish interfaces. None of these things are true for the phone market.

What do I know though? I won't pay over the odds for a piece of technology just because it looks cool. I don't think I'm the target market.

But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?

Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be. The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.

So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.

Why do that? Why not mod you up and up and up... to make it easier to find your post later. There is a large difference between being a troll, and being wrong. I'm sure you sincerely believe what you say.

But without corporations pushing their email to these devices you won't get the blackberry user base, and lets face it most big corporations haven't liked anything else Apple up to this point so why change for this product?

On the other hand, what if consumer push is more interesting to more people than business email push? The Yahoo push mail is an interesting option. Does everyone on earth really have more interest in their business email than the personal stuff?

Now the home user? The reason most don't have a smart phone is that they just don't need it. Most of the regular phones on the market already do far more and are alot more complicated than people want them to be.

Sounds like a a great idea then is to take a complicated device and make it much simpler. I'm not sure I know any company that has any experience at that.

The average person is going to ask why they need to upgrade to this expensive phone when their normal phone does far more than they ever wanted it to do.

Does the average person really like the phone they have?

So there will be a bunch of apple fans and tech geeks that buy this initially then it's sales will plummet and Apple will can the project.Ok I'm done burning my karma now.

You misspelled "credibility". Brave of you to post where we can all read your thoughts in a year.

Preface: I worked as a service jerkoff for Sprint for over a year and dealt with a lot of dumb customers trying to learn their devices. Now on with the show!The thing that kicks ass to much about the iPhone is the effort Apple has put in to designing the UI to REMOVE much of complication from doing things. It takes half a dozen key presses do anything other than get to the contacts list or open a text message on most phones.

I'm all about function over form and function is where Apple kicks ass. That said, t

The article doesn't mention the required monthly charge to use the features on the iphone. A quick internet search doesn't reveal the cost either. Why is this such a big secret? People keep comparing the ipod to the iphone but because one of the devices requires a regular monthly payment to make it function I think they are two completely different markets. Ipods didn't take any initial investment to use or maintain use if you ripped your own CD collection. The iphone is a paperweight without the service plan that is offered through only one provider. So why hasn't the monthly service cost been given yet? AT&T doesn't even have a iphone website yet, even though one of the first Google paid ads shown are for AT&T wireless services.

Until last week I would never have dreamed of owning an iPod or iPhone now, I am seriously considering the iPhone. What caused this change? My daughter graduated and for a graduation present, I bought her a 30GB iPod. I've always felt that while Apple products have some unique features that they were overpriced and not all that much better than their other-brand or no-brand counterparts. I've never been one to pay extra for style or "bling" and that is exactly what I thought Apple brought to the party. Still my daughter was celebrating a major accomplishment, she wanted an iPod and I wanted to give her a special present for her big day.

The iPod surprised me. I was impressed with virtually everything about it. I liked the simple controls. The sound clarity was top notch. The screen was crisp and clear. Even the battery charged quickly! "Fit and finish" were awesome. I went out to the iTunes store and bought Alice Cooper's "Schools Out" and made that the first song put on the iPod (a symbolic gesture); even that was faster and far easier than I expected! In little time at all I had 500+ songs on it (and told her the rest of her CD collection was up to her to put on).

Now, I'm a believer. While paying several hundred bucks for a tiny electronic object that is nothing more than an entertainment device still feels kind of steep, I can finally understand why many (including my daughter) like it so much. When I started seeing the iPhone commercials, I was very impressed and really think that Apple may just be the company with the experience and foresight to actually build the right all-inclusive portable device for communications and entertainment. While I may balk at the hefty price, I have to say that I am at least tempted and can certainly understand why some people will rush out to buy one of these "phones" (they really aren't a phone anymore, that is just one of many functions). I'll probably wait for a few months but, I think that my next phone will probably be an iPhone.

In California, using a non-hands-free phone while driving becomes a moving violation in mid-2008. Washington State is doing this too. (That was enacted right after a 5-car collision caused by a Blackberry user [nwsource.com].) I've had my truck rear-ended twice by people on cell phones. One said to the cop, afterwards, "I was just finishing my call". Had a near miss two weeks ago; someone pulling out of a parking space on a busy street was using a phone, so they couldn't turn the wheel fast enough and drove across two lanes of traffic before straightening out.

Remember the iDrive [bmwworld.com], from BMW? That was a disaster, hated by many owners. Too much "head down" time, looking at the display instead of the road.

is kind of a geek, but a non-techie, she resisted when i bought her a 19" LCD as a gift, but last night we were watching TV and a commercial for the iPhone came on. She was like, "Oh my god, what is that?!?" I kept my mouth shut untill the end of the ad and she asked how much it was. "$600." "Thats it?!". In fact as i was typing this she was on apples website and asked me if the student discount would be availible on iPhones. I think Apple's got a winner on their hands.

The iPhone is awesome. Everything my iBook has including WiFi for VoIP.

Too bad they partnered with AT&T so at minimum it's going to cost you 600(+tax) plus another $100/month at least. At $3,000 for a phone that won't even work in my house, or lab, or many other places because the monopoly AT&T has no reason to make it work - I live in silicon valley so even less reason AT&T should make anything work. AT&T can just go screw themselves and take Apple along with them.

When you can buy it without the completely useless AT&T plan, it will sell faster then they possibly make them for many years to come.

I had a phone with Windows mobile on it. It sucked ass big time. There wasn't really one thing it did well other than crash.

Then, I got a Blackberry. Their desktop 'push' concept sucks, although to be fair, it worked pretty reliably. The service was bloody expensive though. Also there was no DUN support at the time, which is my biggest need in a phone.

Now I have a Treo 650. It sucks the least, but still sucks pretty bad. The DUN support is good, although the cell company was useless support-wise, the email works via IMAP and the software isn't too bad. Seriously though. Palm, I'm looking at you. You've had products on the market for 10 years now. The product itself has usually been pretty decent. Your syncing software, and the whole notion of conduits, is not only bad, it's pathetic. No Palm device I've ever had has synched reliably with any OS, let alone one that's not MS. But, I hear you boys are going over to linux. That might maybe possibly help. We'll see.

My point is, if the iPhone sucks anywhere close to as much ass as the other ones AND lacks a keypad, thereby limiting texting potential, it'll be DOA.

I have exactly the opposite experience. I am way more organized now than ever before in my life, and it is because I can track appointments, contacts, and e-mail in Outlook, and sync them to my WM5 phone, and stay up-to-date even though I travel about 60 percent of the time.It is way cool being more ogranized than my partner, who is naturally organized, but not so tech-oriented. Who knows, I might have even gotten good grades in school if I had had one of these things long ago.

Don't worry, I can see Apple doing another 'exclusive' deal with Verizon, and another one with T-Mobile (apparently the European partner) in time. There's probably some loophole that will allow them to roll it out to other providers after six months or a year.

I believe they approached Verizon initially, as they did a lot of carriers. However, Cingular was the only network at the time who were willing to partner with Apple on Apple's terms: Apple was to design the phone, control every aspect of it, and prevent the network from stuff their own software and logo all over it. That may seem reasonable from the perspective of a hardware designer, but must networks were used to stamping all approved phones with their own software/logo/etc.
Blame Verizon for declinin

1. More flash memory storage--probably in the 16-20 GB range.2. Longer battery life.3. Support for CDMA digital cellular phone service, which makes it possible for the iPhone to run on Verizon and Sprint networks, including full EV-DO support.

This second-generation iPhone will likely be available worldwide with either GSM or CDMA support.

Really? When you look at the areas of largest growth (Laptops) Apple is doing extremely well, like 15% of all laptop sales in the US. That is more than a niche as it's a higher percentage than other large computer makers manage.

Why do people assume that just because a market with a huge degree of locking factor (desktop computers) Apple has made slower headway than the wide open music player market, that Apple can be any less successful in a market where it's equally easy to